Rutherford was deeply moved, so that he
uttered curses upon Lady Stair, and at the last reproached Janet in
these words: "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder." After this
sad end of his hopes the unfortunate gentleman went abroad and died in
exile. Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar meanwhile were married--the lady
"being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or
advised." As soon, however, as the wedded pair had retired from the
bridal feast hideous shrieks were heard to resound through the house,
proceeding from the nuptial chamber. The door was thereupon burst open
and persons entering saw the bridegroom stretched upon the floor,
wounded and bleeding, while the bride, dishevelled and stained with
blood, was grinning in a paroxysm of insanity. All she said was, "Take
up your bonny bridegroom." About two weeks later she died. The year of
those events was 1669. The wedding took place on August 24. Janet died
on September 12. Dunbar recovered, but he would never tell what occurred
in that chamber of horror, nor indeed would he permit any allusion to
the subject. He did not long survive the tragic event,--having been
fatally injured, by a fall from his horse, when riding between Leith
and Holyrood. He died on March 28, 1682. The death of Lord Rutherford
is assigned to the year 1685. Such is the melancholy story as it may be
gathered from Scott's preface. In writing his novel that great master of
the art of fiction,--never yet displaced from his throne or deprived of
his sceptre,--adopted fictitious names, invented fresh circumstances,
amplified and elevated the characters, judiciously veiled the
localities, and advanced the period of those tragical incidents to about
the beginning of the eighteenth century. The delicate taste with which
he used his materials has only been surpassed, in that beautiful
composition, by the affluent genius with which he vitalised every part
of his narrative. In no other of his many books has he shown a deeper
knowledge than is revealed in that one of the terrible passion of love
and of the dark and sinuous ways of political and personal craft. When
_The Bride of Lammermoor_ was first published no mention was made in it
of the true story upon which remotely it had been based; but by the time
Scott came to write the preface of 1829 other writers had been less
reticent, and some account of the Dalrymple tragedy had got into print,
so that no reason existed for further silence